Exemplar

There's an interesting dichotomy I've been thinking about, to do with relatability. Most of us, I suspect, like to think of ourselves as relatable. That is, we believe that the things we feel or observe generalise to the rest of the population. This turns out to be pretty important because you could, for example, observe that you are often tired in the afternoons, and then relate that experience to someone in conversation. If that person has the same experience, you both feel connected by it, and comforted that other people feel the same things as you.

It's also important for reasoning about other people. Let's say you are grossed out by spiders. Do you throw a spider-themed halloween party? Well, specifically, you're grossed out by actual spiders and something in particular about their behaviour, not just by anything that claims to be a spider. People in spider costumes, cartoon spiders, adorable plush spiders and the Porsche 550 Spyder are all fine. This may not be obvious if you do not feel that spiders are gross, or if your experience of spider-grossness is very different from that of others.

So relatability is good. Where's the dichotomy? There's another thing many of us want to be, and that is exceptional. Perhaps most people need 8-9 hours of sleep but you are proud of being able to function fine on 6. You might have a particular aptitude for languages, or instruments, or horses or whatever. Even if it's not some genetic or environmental predisposition, you could be exceptional in what you've achieved, in how hard you've worked and how much time you've put in relative to others. There are lots of ways to be exceptional and being exceptional is usually considered a good thing.

But you can't be both relatable and exceptional. If you're amazing at the violin, chances are you're not going to relate to many people about music, and definitely not the violin. If you're a few standard deviations off the beaten track in intelligence, your thoughts will be less relatable than if you were more average. And if you work hard to hone yourself into someone great, an exceptional person who does exceptional things, the end result will be that it is hard to relate to people who aren't.

Which isn't to say that being exceptional isn't worth pursuing. Being in a situation where you're doing so well that it's hard to relate to people is the definition of a good problem to have. But it is still a problem, and in particular it seems worth being aware that your opinions may become less relevant even as they become more advanced. Worth thinking about, too, is that the risk of becoming alienated, or the comfort of being relatable, may hold you back from becoming more exceptional.

In some cases, that could even be the right decision to make.